Raptors, Maybe

Tying up my California adventures with a bow, here's a music video the GGRO interns made to sum up our experiences in raptor research on the Pacific Coast.

Road Trapping

Yesterday, I got a chance to experience "road trapping," which involves taking our raptor banding show on the road. Essentially, we drove around until we spotted a raptor. We chucked a trap out of the window of the car, waited for a few minutes to see if we could catch the bird, and then banded it right out of the trunk of the car.

Emma and Buzz band an American kestrel. All the banding materials are in the back of the car.

We spent the entire day driving around the Davis, CA, area. However, time flew by as we were constantly stopping and occasionally banding some incredible birds. Three of the six birds we banded yesterday were American kestrels, the charismatic little falcons that I have come to love this year.

Adult, female American kestrel.

Female American kestrels are aged by the final black bar on their tails. In this case, it was an adult bird because the last black bar is so much thicker than the other bars.

We were not successful in catching every bird we set the traps out for. Even so, just getting a chance to see some of these unique raptors was worth the trip.

An adult ferruginous hawk (the first adult I've ever seen). This bird is the definition of majestic.

Dark-morph adult red-tailed hawk.

The highlight of the day, however, was banding three adult red-shouldered hawks. There is a theory the other GGRO interns have developed that any black-and-white bird (especially if there is a hint of red) will automatically qualify as one of my favorites. Recent examples include pigeon guillemots, black phoebes, and California condors. Thus, these beautiful birds immediately won me over. So much so that I am writing in an uncharacteristically gushy way about them. But I'm putting science aside for this entry, because these birds are just plain amazing. See for yourself:

Red-shoulder #1.

Look at the black and the red and the white. Just look at it! Wow!

I demonstrate why this bird is called "red shouldered."

Are you seeing this bird? It's so cool!

Close-up of the feathers. Amazing.

Red-shoulder #2 was much redder on the body. Do you see this bird? Do you see how beautiful it is?

This is another shot of a red-shoulder looking incredible.

Red-shoulder #2 release shot.

This is red-shoulder #3, caught about 27.3 seconds after red-shoulder #2.

Some red-shoulders have particularly prominent hackles (feathers on the back of the skull), giving them a spiky-headed appearance.

So, here's the deal. I like birds (obviously). That being said, I like to think of myself as a scientist, biologist, what-have-you-ist. I like to take an objective perspective of my work and not resort to constant "ohhhhhhhh those birdies are soooooo cuuute!!" gushiness. That's not why I'm motivated to do what I do. However, I think it is important to take a step back every now and then and acknowledge the simple fact that these creatures are amazing, beautiful, incredible. Yesterday was an experience in research, but more importantly, in was an experience in awe-stricken appreciation.

Banding 9/19: Hatch Year Female Cooper's Hawk

Particularly prominent "eyebrow"

This is a picture of me being yelled at by a Cooper's hawk.

Banding 9/13: Small Sharpie

I went raptor banding again today and ended up banding two accipiters: a male Cooper's hawk and a female sharp-shinned hawk. As the migration picks up, these will be the two most common species we'll be banding, both because of the mass numbers of them that migrate through the Marin Headlands as well as the ease with which we are able to catch these particular species.

The sharp-shinned hawk is one of the smallest of the diurnal raptors in North America. It is funny to be banding them as they attempt to act "fierce" - biting at your finger for example - when in actuality, they just look really, really cute. The sharp-shinned hawk we banded today was a hatch-year female, and on the small side. For every bird we band, we have an "expected values chart" that lays out the average and mean range of all the measurements we take for a given species and sex. In this case, our female sharpie was on the low end of the mean range for all measurements.

Trying to look fierce. Actually looking cute.

Our data sheets and the "expected values chart."

Banding 9/12: Backpack

My backpack got locked into a fellow intern's car today, so I had to improv before heading up to the blind. Luckily, I found another pack in the lost and found and I was able to gather up some "lunch" including some granola bars, half a bag of peanut-butter pretzels, and some left-over banana walnut bread (lunch of champions!) At the end of the day, as I got into Lynn's car, I noticed that the window on the other side was rolled down - I could have gotten my backpack all along.

We banded one raptor this morning (the other blinds were much more productive today, including the first merlins of the season, an adult red-tailed hawk, a red-shouldered hawk, and a red-tailed hawk that got outfitted with a GSM tracking device). Our red-tail came out of nowhere without any warning. It was a hatch-year male. Since my initial taloning encounter, I've become much more confident handling and banding these big, sharp birds.

The rest of the day was pretty slow with very few birds passing by. We did see quite a bit of diversity, though, including an osprey, white-tailed kite, Northern harrier, and mysterious black falcon. By 3:00, the wind was blowing fast and we found ourselves surrounded by fog shortly thereafter.

Banded hatch-year red-tailed hawk.

This should probably be a meme.

Flying away!

Banding 9/10: Slug

You know it isn't the greatest day of raptor banding when the highlight of the day is seeing a banana slug.

Banding 9/7: Superstitious

Some of the volunteers in the GGRO banding program can be a little superstitious about the way things run in the banding blind. Yesterday, for example, as we got the blind set up for the day, I placed all of the banding tools out on the table in anticipation of the processing of a raptor. I was gently informed, however, that this could totally jinx our ability to catch a raptor in the first place. Sure enough, we spent the first three hours that morning staring at a birdless landscape.

Finally, my sight leader took it upon herself to put all the tools back in the drawer from whence they came. Five minutes later, we caught our first (and only) bird of the day, a male American kestrel.  I'm learning so much about science.

Male American kestrel.

Kestrels are one of the few raptors where males and females show distinctly different plumages. In this case, the male shows silvery/blue wings whereas the female is rusty with black stripes across the back and wings.

Male American kestrel tail: solid rusty color with a single, solid black stripe.

Female American kestrel tail: "tiger" striping all the way across. (We banded a female AMKE on Thursday - pretty cool to see both sexes up close within a couple days of each other).

First Day in the Blind

Yesterday, the GGRO banding-man-in-charge, Chris, took fellow intern Anna and I up for an "intern practice banding day." Given that it's pretty early in the season, we weren't really expecting to band any raptors. However, a randomly sunny day combined with a nice wind led to an exciting first day in the blind.

A hatch-year red-tailed hawk flying over the hills behind Slacker blind. (Photo credit: Chris Briggs)

There are four blinds in operation around the Marin Headlands. We banded at the "Slacker" blind (named after the name of the hill, not the laziness of its users), from which we had a beautiful view of Hawk Hill, Point Bonita, and the Pacific Ocean, as well as much of the rest of the Marin Headlands. Most of our morning was spent repairing nets and making sure everything was in tip-top shape, but by noon, we were inside the blind, waiting for some raptors to appear. Here are some of the highlights that came to follow:

-Prairie Falcon: One of the most elusive birds of the Marin Headlands, the prairie falcon is seen by the hawkwatchers an average of four times per season, and banded an average of twice per season. How amazing would it be if that were the first bird I banded out here? Spoiler alert: it wasn't. However, I got an amazingly up-close look as one stooped right into the trapping area. It was quick, but we identified it as a prairie falcon without question. This might've been my only chance to see this bird all season - amazing!

Not my photo, but this is basically what we saw. (www.nickdunlop.com)

-Red-tailed Hawk: Our first successful catch was a juvenile red-tailed hawk. Even before taking measurements, we could tell that she was a female based on how hefty she was (female raptors are larger than their male counterparts). Even more interesting was the fact that she was a rufous-morph, a rarer version of the typical red-tailed hawk. We came to this conclusion based on the heavy, dark streaking on her upper breast, and the cinnamon hue to her tail.

Cinnamon streaks in the red-tailed tail.

Almost immediately, I learned a valuable lesson in large raptor handling. GGRO handles raptors differently than my previous experience at Hawk Ridge, and as I was adjusting my grip, one of her legs came free. The next thing I knew, four sharp, hawk talons were embedded in my arm. Chris was a champ, as he pulled those strong toes apart, but it was certainly more than a sting. In fact, I'm a little disappointed that the scars left behind are so wimpy - they don't reflect the amount of pain a wild raptor's talons are capable of. Obviously, I came out alive and it was a great lesson. I will certainly be considerably more cautious handling raptors from now on.

I then got to experience the processing of the hawk, as I took all of its measurements, applied the band, and recorded all of the data. This took a bit of time, it being my first bird, and I'll be working to increase my efficiency with this stage of the process to decrease the amount of time the wild bird has to hang out with me in the blind. Afterwards, we took her outside for a photo-op and released her into the wind.

Here I am with the first raptor I banded in California. Not a bad start! (Photo credit: Anna Stunkel - also the next one).

I'm attempting to show off this bird's wing, but the wind was making that challenging.

-Four more red-tailed Hawks: While I was processing lady red-tail, we were being taunted by four other red-tailed hawks outside the blind. They circled around, came close to the nets, and then flew back up again, over and over and over. In fact, one actually perched on one of our poles for a record-breaking 18 minutes. Chris said that this is typical kestrel behavior, but you rarely see a buteo act this way. Very interesting.

-American Kestrel: Towards the end of the day, we caught our second bird, a hatch-year, male American Kestrel. The males are distinguished by their silvery-blue wing color, and solid tail with a bold black stripe. We aged it as a juvenile because it had stripes all the way up its back (instead of only partway as we would have seen in the adult).

The girls I work with keep going on and on about how adorable kestrels are. I wonder how cute they'll think it is when they see one attacking its prey.

Male American kestrel tail.

American kestrels are falcons, same family as the peregrines. I find myself partial to falcons, so it was pretty cool to see this bird up close. Anna did the processing this time as I kept an eye on the nets (and another kestrel managed to elude us). When Anna was done, I handled the bird as well. Red-tails and kestrels represent the two size extremes of birds we'll be handling this season, so it was nice to get a feel for both ends of the spectrum. Afterwards, I let him go too.

Kestrel release. (Photo credit: Anna Stunkel)

By the time our kestrel was flying off into the hills, we had to start cleaning up and head back down the hill. Considering we were expecting to see very few birds, I would consider it a very successful day. A great first experience banding at GGRO.

What the Duck?

Here I am in California, an intern for a raptor observatory, so naturally the first bird I banded out here was a ... mallard duck?

Quack!

Fellow GGRO intern Emma's sister Rosa is currently working on a waterfowl banding project in a natural area called Siusun, about an hour and a half north of San Francisco. Waterfowl have the highest recovery rate of any banded birds, due to hunting. So there has been a recent push in California to band more waterfowl and find out how many ducks born in the Golden State actually stay here.

In the last year, I've gotten a chance to observe songbird banding, hawk banding, and owl banding, so it was fascinating to see the similarities and differences that exist in duck banding. As the head of the Minnesota Zoo bird show once told me: "ducks are just really funny animals and always make people laugh." The light-hearted and jovial attitude that seemed to pervade our duck banding experience seems to only confirm that theory.

To catch the ducks, Rosa sets up traps in the water, full of lots of delicious bait (in this case, wheat). The ducks can get in through a narrow entrance, but it is designed so that escape is a much trickier ordeal, although as I witnessed today, not altogether impossible. Every morning and evening, Rosa (or another waterfowl banding technician) checks the traps, and uses a net to extract the ducks, placing them in a carrying case, which she uses to transport them back to her truck where the bands await.

The duck traps, located in the middle of the pond.

Extracting the ducks from the trap.

Ducks, waiting for some bling.

The ducks in this habitat are typically either mallards of gadwalls - the first task when removing a duck from the crate is to decide which one. As ducklings, the only way to tell is to measure the diameter of the leg as each species wears a different sized band. As they continue to get their first full juvenile molt, mallards will begin to show the characteristic blue/green, iridescent bands on their wings. Once the species is determined, the band is affixed to the left leg of the duck.

Ooh, shiny.

Affixing a band to a female mallard (and you will notice that I'm stupidly putting it on the wrong leg).

Throughout this process, the ducks would show varying levels of passivity. For the more boisterous of the bunch, Rosa showed us how to put the ducks into a "burrito hold" to calm them down. Essentially, we would stick the duck's head under its wing, and it would immediately stop flailing so much.

Once the band is on, the next step is to determine the sex. There are sometimes clues on the feathers and bill. For example, female mallards sometimes show speckling on their yellow bill. However, to be sure there's no confusion, we had to check between the legs. As it turns out, ducks are the only birds to actually exhibit penises, so if a penis is found dangling out of the duck's cloaca, that's pretty conclusive evidence that it is a male.

Female mallard bill. To protect the privacy of the ducks, no cloaca photos have been posted.

Next up is age. While trapping ducks this summer, Rosa has yet to trap a non-hatch-year duck (meaning that all of the ducks trapped were born this spring). Whether this has to do with there being just so many more hatch-years than non-hatch-years, or whether the adults leave earlier for migration, or whether the adults are just smarter, Rosa could not say. As the ducklings molt into ducks, they would slowly replace their down with feathers. We examined how much down the ducklings had to see how far along they were in molting. If a duck was fully molted, we checked the tail feathers. Notched tail feathers indicated a hatch-year duck, like all the ducks we saw today.

Notched tail feathers - this duck was born this spring.

Lastly, we needed to get a weight. The obtainment of the ducks' weights was a great example of their resiliency throughout the process compared to other birds I've seen banded.

Anna weighs a duck.

Once all the data is collected and recorded, the ducks are free to be released back into their habitat.

It was pretty cool to dip my toes into waterfowl banding today. In addition to the ducks, we saw a ton of other great wildlife including a number of great egrets, Northern harriers, white-tailed kites, a common moorhen, and a herd of ten elk! While I enjoyed banding the ducks, it also made me all the more excited to get going with the raptor research. Three weeks until the migration season begins!